Phil Starr

The Highlands is a big place, maybe you should hook up with @neepheid and come down to one of the Bass Bashes sharing the driving. Thre's usually a great selection of amps to try out. It looks like you aren't in a hurry at the moment. If you aren't using the preamp section of the amp then have you considered going FRFR and using an active PA speaker for your amplifcation? The QSC 12.2 has been used successfully by several bassists and is 17'4kg, a useful weight saving. If you go for separates then do look at LFSys, they are the best sounding FRFR bass speakers around at the moment. Barefaced are lighter but the LFS more accurate. The Monaco is the heaviest at 14kg. I've used the Monaco, Silverstone I and the Monza. I settled for the Monza.

I think the clue is in the title, Speaker Placement Basics. He doesn't go into a lot of things but has stuck to the sort of set up most beginners will be working with if anything I doubt many bands have this much equipment to play with. Wall placement isn't a panacea and wall reinforcement is unnecessary if your subs are adequate. Placing them to one side means you can't match the level of the sub to both of the tops. Subs may be omnidirectional but the sound level still falls with distance so the bass will potentially be too loud on the side nearest the tops and not loud enough on the side further away. In any case most people viewing this for the first time probably won't have access to subs or centre fills. Steve's question is about directional speakers and where to point them and the heat maps are a really useful way of looking at this.

Hi Steve, I think it's well worth looking at this if you haven't aleady seen it. It shows the 'heatmap' for typical point source speakers on stands and straight ahead is pretty much what you want in most gigs. I think it's the heat map which is useful, it helps to be able to picture your cabs shining out sound into the room and you can take that mental picture with you to rooms that are sub optimal.

I'm not getting into discussion of room modes (the collection of resonances in a particular space) here. It merits it's own seperate discussion and is probably better suited to being in the PA section or studio recording. Science works by isolating single variables and investigating and understanding them one at a time. In this little bit all I wanted to do was explain a simple phenomenon which we've all experienced and can easily rectify. It's more psychoacoustics than physics. Maybe a bit of biology. Most of our lives are lived at modest sound levels (70-80db) and the frequencies that are most important for daily living are in the mid-range. The quieter it gets the more the mids are boosted in our brains. If we listen to music quietly we need to add a bit of 'loudness' or the balance sounds weedy. Bassists in particular need to know of the opposite effect; if we increase the volume above the 80db range then we need to apply anti-loudness, to boost the mids and cut bass (treble in this case is outside of the range of a bass guitar). This will restore the tonal balance that you have set up so carefully at home or in the rehearsal room. This is the bit you as a bassist are in sole charge of. This is about preserving your own tone It's the job of whoever is in charge of the PA to deal with room resonances (or room modes), though in a really awful room they might need you to help out by turning down or reducing you lower frequencies especially if you are using backline only for bass.

Great idea, I did think of bringing my Snugs along

I'm wondering if it's not such a mad idea after all. You could alternate gigs with O Fortuna: Carl Orff to bring in some vocals and maybe the Dies Irae I actually think Zarathustra at really high volume would probably just impress the audience and maybe even drag people in just to see what was going on. You don't get bassier than a 32' stop after all. If you haven't seen it, this might be interesting. There's a link to do the measurements using some free open source software.

I bought a really cheap one from B&Q and it does the job so much better than my Skill Saw. I've invested in all sorts of clamping and jigs over the years but this little cheapy does the job really well. It's great for trimming doors when you hang them too.

To all intents and purposes the air in the port will just 'see' your printed port as a cylinder of air so this is great. the flange will cover any imperfections and give you a potential way of securing the port. For the technical nerds: there are sharp changes of pressure at the ends of the port when the air is moving. This is different at the end of the baffle where there is a 180deg change and the inside end of the port where it is 360deg. WinISD includes an end correction in the calculations and to date I haven't measured anything to suggest it isn't accurate. I've got some printed flanges I'm meaning to try which curve the exit of the port (much bigger radius than Rob's port). These are meant to allow a slower change in pressure and reduce turbulence in the port. Even with a big radius on the end of the port I still wouldn't expect you to need to change the length significantly. Your flange should have no audible effects.

That's correct. Looks like its all going well When the glue thickens I put the container in a bowl of hot water or just stand it on a radiator and the glue softens and flows more easily. I did that in the video. I've got all sorts of woodworking gear including a table saw circular saws, jigsaw etc but last year I bought a plunge saw with an aluminium track. It's a revelation for cutting panels, so much easier than manuvering an 8'x4' sheet of ply through the table saw even with the sliding table on the saw. It's a great tool for cutting speaker panels. It's what I used for the prototype 8.

The best track is going to be something you know well and that is well recorded. Acoustic instruments are better than electronic ones for picking out problems generally and older recordings are often useful as most modern recordings tend to be highly compressed and as advanced production techniques are available across the board honest recordings can be hard to find. @stevie uses Smooth Operator by Sade It's got some nicely recorded kick drums and of course vocals, plus enough other instruments to give your PA a workout. I use a lot of female vocals to find the problems Western Highway by Maura O'Connel is a favourite as it has two clear vocals and two acoutic guitars, the bass isn't prominent but nicely recorded. The Weakness in Me by Joan Armatrding is another well recorded song and has some lovely bass, but the point is not which songs but that you know them well enough to spot anything wrong. I know thse voices as well as anything so they work for me. I use classical music at home for testing speakers which is much more demanding for speakers to successfully reproduce, and all of the instruments are acoustic of course. I'm not sure I'd use them on stage before a gig though If pushed you might get away with Also Sprach Zarathustra which has a lot of bass and only lasts 1min49secs It'd be a dramatic way of starting your set 😁

Reading; where I went to university and lived for 23 years Bromley: where I was born this feels like a homecoming

I'd expect nothing less from you people from the home counties

I'm a regular user of Marketplace but I don't have high hopes of it. You are largely trawling the bottom of the pool, people clearing out their houses of unwanted trash. Pricing is all over the place and I've seen a lot of stuff where the asking price is more than the new price. You aren't buying from experts by and large. In the case of basses a lot of the stuff is parents selling off starter instruments. Most musicians wouldn't expect a top price through FB and are going to advertise elsewhere, like on Bass Chat . On the plus side a lot of people don't know what they are selling so you'll sometimes see a real bargain pop up. I might sell my Cort Action bass on Marketplace but I'm not going to sell my MIA Fender Deluxe that way. If I was going ot use FB I'd go to some of the FB groups that specialise in buying selling Musical instruments. Having said that I've picked up some quality PA gear on Marketplace including a pair of RCF ART745's as new, and in RCF cases for £1200. Anyway if @neepheid buys any more basses he's going to need a bigger truck next time he comes down here, what a fabulous collection

Hi Rob, looks like you are cracking on. I don't know whether you have seen this. It's a video of me assembling an 'easy build cab' live at one of the SW bass bashes a few years back. The technique is the same ror all the 'easy builds'. The size changes but the procedure always remains the same

OK first of all I wasn't sure which batten to specify, conventionally timber is specified by its sawn dimensions and then planed down afterwards. Years ago this was only partially mechanised so wood was planed until it was smooth with variable amounts removed ending up with slighlty different thicknesses. In the end I used the 22mm that B&Q specified for their batten. I don't think the extra volume will be significant. Screw and glue, The whole design of the 'easy build' cab is based upon the ease of forming really strong 90deg joints without needing clamping. The screws hold everything in place and put pressure on the joints until the glue sets. The glue is what gives the cab it's final strength (it's stronger than the wood) and it also seals the joint so it is completely airtight. One option is to assemble the cab 'dry' with just the screws to check everything fits properly. You can teh take it apart and assemble it with the glue. I'll explain the gluing procedure later today. Using a 2x8 with the speakers in a separate cab is just like combining any two 8ohm cabs and I always install twin sockets on my cabs so that I can do this. If you wanted to build a 2x8 in a single box it needs to be double the size but crucially the ports need to be changed to keep the larger space tuned to the same freequency.. I'll be back later today with some links and advice on the build.

Very few mics are flat and the mics in those Zooms are better than many. Most vocal mics have restricted frequency responses (no point in frequencies absent from human voices anyway) but most have some lift in the upper end to bring in some brightness. The result is that not all mics suit the same person and it's probably even more personal than your choice of bass. My duo partner and I have tries swapping his Shure Beta for my Sennheiser, we swapped back after one song. They are similar prices and both from good makers but wow do I prefer mine. It might be familiarity of course but if you can borrow other peoples mics it's really worth experimenting before you buy.

i've had good experiences with B&Q too and once they start I've never been charged any extra.

I just saw this post in another thread, I put in approximate dimensions of my cab and they quoted £55 for a basic level plywood cut to size. A 1220x604mm sheet of ply from wickes is £15 so you could maybe shop around for cheaper but cut to size is clearly available. This firm offer a 33% discount for 'trade' so it mught be worth someone trying to input their band as a business For information only though, I've never tried this firm

Their reputation is justified by direct experience. They didn't suddenly become bad mics they just got superceded by 60 years of development, including by Shure. Materials technology has just moved on and. They are still incredibly reliable mics and sound just the way they did back in the 60's. You can still even buy the old 'Elvis' mic. They are still gloriously easy to sing with and for anyone with a strong voice they don't give too many feedback problems. Their soft focus sound will sometimes veil a few wrinkles in the voices of poor singers like me. Mainly though people like them because they are familiar. Using a mic is a very personal thing, probably more so than using the same bass and experience lets you use the mic to do things vocally you would need to re-learn if you change. The SM58's colour your vocals, they aren't flat response lose some of the highs and quite a lot of midrange detail. The first time I got a direct test of this was years ago when a singers SM58 went down mid song when I was mixing for her band. I swapped it for an AKG D5 sitting unused on a stand. It was like the sun had come out all the details in her voice revealed. In several bands now I've had singers borrow my Senny 935 to 'try out' and had to crowbar it out of their hands at the end of rehearsals. All of them went out and eventually bought new mics. To be fair to the original SM58 it was the lead that was faulty I've got friends who drive around in VW Beetles and one who drives a Hillman Imp and sometimes a vintage 2CV. They absolutely love them and I'm tempted by a Morris Traveller whenever I see one in good condition. Shure will go on making SM58's so long as people buy them but there's a reason why they make the Beta58. I don't think anyone 'has it in' for the 58 or is fooled by the clones, we just don't want people spending that much money on a mic when they can get better for less.

It's standard practice and you shouldn't really be doing anything else. the only problem is when a substantial part of your sound is coming from backline. Obviously if you have set up your bass amp on an open stage and you are forced into a corner at the next gig then cutting the boom on the PA won't alter the boom from your amp. If you are operating without back line then you lose that problem.

It's a good shout, you'll find that even the humble AKG D5 is just as good at feedback rejection as teh D7 and still sounds so much better than the SM58. It's like moving from a Morris Minor to a new VW Golf. The only word of warning is that for people playing instruments a super-cardioid like the AKG's demands really good discipline on the mic. Even slightly off axis and the sound fades away quite dramatically and you really need to 'eat the mic'. I found after a few gigs with my AKG's that I needed a cardioid mic and went for the Sennheiser E935. My duo partner uses a Shure Beta58. For singers who don't play instruments and hold the mic in their hands this shouldn't be an issue.

I use the Sansamp BDDI with my duo. Gives me a choice of three tones though I stick to one clean and one with a little drive. Previously I used a Zoom B1ON (now the B1 four) With a bit of fiddling around you can get pretty much any tone you want out of the Zoom but I prefer the three old fashioned stomp switches on the SansAmp, The Zoom is relegated to tuner nowadays but would be a backup if anything goes wrong with the BDDI. The SansAmp is also a bit magic

And just in case you don't think a magnet can't hold a Gnome captive. This is my magnetic tray doing the lifting

They probably wouldn't need to be that big either. Strangely I nearly ordered some last night to hold on a grille I'm fitting to my BC108 I'd just ordered a couple of bits from AliExpress including some threaded inserts for mounting the speakers and noticed the said magnets in the corner of the screen at a good price, but just as I clicked so too late. I'm sitting here with my Gnome in front of me, as you can see the feet are naturally dovetailed so flipping them over would be possible. Alternatively a bigger bolt head or a steel washer would bring the screw head up to a fraction below the feet so that a set of four neo button magnets would engae with the bolt head and it would stop an amp sliding around. Another option would be to embed a magnet into the feet to engage with magents embedded in the cab.-

You don't need to be too scared of technology but perhaps a little wary of advice on the internet You've ben using two Mackie subs plus two tops, presumably for quite a while with no problems but some people you've never met have told you they are unreliable. It would seem they are wrong about at least four speakers! I've heard the rumours too which usually go along the lines of 'get the old ones as they are more reliable'. I also know of several local bands still using their 20 year old Mackies. Think of it as being like cars, My two most problematic cars were Toyotas, an AVensis and a Yaris, my most reliable were Fiat Multiplas. I don't think Fiat are generally better than Toyota but failure rates are low and Iactually 89% plays 95% means it isn't hard to be apparently lucky or unlucky. My advice its to take advantage of the internet and buy a used Mackie cheaply because of the internet pile on. To answer your question however. These are active subs with volume controls, mis-matching isn't an issue really. Subs really don't have flat responses so there may be a mis-match there but I doubt you'll hear it and the auudience not at all.